Three or four paces from him the other two members of the tough brigade had made good use of their time. The old man was out, out of the fight for keeps, as Simon had known he must be after a few minutes of the treatment he had been taking. He lay sprawled on the ground like a rag doll, with his head fallen limply back over the edge of the curb. One of his opponents was kneeling on his chest; and the other turned round from the diverting pastime of kicking him in the ribs to meet the Saint's approach with a rush of savagely swinging fists.
The Saint side-stepped like a dancer, blocked one blow, ducked another, and slid in with the same movement to catch him in the exact centre of his stomach with a blow that doubled him up as if he had stepped into the path of a runaway pile driver. After which something happened that the victim could never afterwards quite believe, and was inclined to attribute to the dizziness induced by the maltreatment of his solar plexus. But in the fog of agonising nausea which numbed his brain, it felt exactly as if two hands of incredible strength took hold of him at the waist and swept him high in the air, and a voice laughed softly and mockingly before the hands let him go. After which he had a feeling of floating gracefully through the air for one or two short pulsebeats before the earth rose up and hit him a frightful blow in the back that almost shattered his spine. . . .
Simon Templar relaxed his muscles and drew a long, deep breath of sheer content. Even viewed purely in the light of healthy exercise, the dull mechanical movements which less-adventurous souls employed to develop impressive bulges on every limb were not in the same street. This, undoubtedly, as he had always been convinced, was what the doctor ordered. This was the real McCoy. And he laughed again, softly and almost inaudibly, as the last man leapt at him.
He was the largest of them all, with shoulders like an ox, though the Saint topped him in height by a couple of inches; and he came in a swerving charge that gave him the space to jerk something dark and glistening from his hip pocket. The Saint saw it and lunged like a flash of lightning for the wrist behind it. He found it and fastened on it with a grip like iron, swinging the gun out of the line of his body. The man tried to wrench free, impatiently, as he might have done from the interference of a child; and a queer look of amazement spread over his broad face when his arm stayed riveted where it was held, as if it had been pinioned in solid rock. The Saint's teeth flashed white in the gloom, and his free fist pistoned up and cracked under the other's outthrust jaw like a gunshot. It should have dropped the large man in his tracks, but he only grunted and shook his head and hit back. Simon slipped under the punch, and they grappled breast to breast. And then there was another sharp thud, and the big man went unexpectedly limp.
Simon let him slide to the ground; and as he folded up he revealed, like an unveiled monument, the homely but supremely happy features of Hoppy Uniatz standing behind him with an automatic in his hand. For a second the Saint's memory flashed backwards in a spurt of sobering alarm, searching for a more precise definition of the timbre of the sharp thud which had preceded his opponent's collapse.
'You didn't shoot him, did you?' he asked anxiously.
'Chees no, boss,' Hoppy reassured him. 'I just pat him on de roof wit' de end of my Betsy. He ain't hoit.'
Simon breathed again.
'I'm not quite sure whether he'd agree with you about that,' he remarked. 'Although I suppose it's better than being dead. . . . But it looked like the makings of a good fight before you butted in.'
He gazed around him somewhat regretfully. The high peak of vivacity in the proceedings seemed to have gone by, leaving a certain atmosphere of anticlimax. The man with the damaged face was trying to get blindly to his feet. The man who had made the short but exciting flight through the air was leaning against the back of the sedan, holding his stomach and looking as if he would like to die. The man whose roof had been patted with the end of Mr Uniatz' Betsy appeared to sleep. What with one thing and another, a shroud of appalling tranquillity had settled upon the scene.
The Saint sighed. And then he grinned vaguely and clapped Hoppy on the shoulder.
'Anyway,' he said, 'let's see what we fished out of the pot.'
He went over to where the old man still lay with his head in the gutter, and picked him up as if he was a child. Whatever else might develop, a strategic withdrawal from the field of victory was the first indicated move. Simon carried the old man over to the Hirondel, dumped him in the tonneau, where he told Hoppy to look after him, and opened the front door for the girl.
She hesitated with one foot on the running board; and again he glimpsed that cloud of suspicion darkening her eyes.
'Really-you needn't bother. ... We can walk -'
'Not with Uncle,' said the Saint firmly. 'He doesn't feel like walking.' Without waiting for her, he slid in behind the wheel and touched the starter. 'Besides, your sparring partners might start walking too-they still have some life left in them --'
Crack!
The shot whined over his head and smacked into the wall beyond, and the Saint smiled as if it amused him. He caught the girl's wrist, dragged her down into the seat beside him, slammed the door and let in the clutch more quickly than the separate movements can be described. A second shot crashed harmlessly into the night; and then Mr Uniatz' Betsy answered. Then a side turning caught the Saint's eye, and he spun the wheel and sent the Hirondel screaming round in a skidding right angle. In another moment they were coasting smoothly down into the outskirts of Santa Cruz.
A little later, he heard far behind him a ragged fusillade which puzzled him for the next twelve hours.
2 But the general aspect of the affair met with his complete approval. He had no fault to find with it-, even if it had temporarily interrupted the urgent and fascinating business that brought him to the Canary Islands. Adventure was still adventure, and there was always room for more-that was the fundamental article of faith which had blazed the Saint's trail of debonair outlawry through all the continents and half the countries of the world. Besides which, there were points about this adventure which were beginning to make it look more than ordinarily interesting. . . .
He glanced at the girl again as they turned out into the wide, open space fronting the harbour.
'Where do you live?' he enquired; and his tone was as casual as if he had been driving her home from a dance.
'Nowhere!' she said quickly. And then, as if the word had come out before she realised what a ridiculous answer it was and how many more questions must inevitably follow it, she said: 'I mean-I don't want to give you any more trouble. You've been awfully kind . . . but you can drop us anywhere around here, and we'll be quite all right.'
